Taipei pictures

担担面非常好吃！

もうイカ口調


Yasu buying fruits






故宫


Banquet food - no, not Matsuzaka beef, but "Matsuzaka pork" ...
and the English translation says "Kobe pork"...


谈水

Paris pictures

Fujita-san




This cheese was exquisite. Felt as if I was embracing a goat.











Jaana, co-inventor of nDCG at the RIAO banquet



Fujita-san at RIAO 2010, discussing curry


Too much mashed potatoes

Future of Flight Aviation Center & Boeing Tour

飛行機を作るところを見てきました。スケールは大きいのですが、おもいっきり手作り感があってびっくりしました。
飛行機は、機械ではなく人間が作っているのだと感じました。
（肝心の工場内は撮影禁止でした。）

Hello 2010

Visited a small Japanese shrine to say hi to God

Goodbye 2009

My album of the year: Depeche Mode Sounds of the Universe Box Set, of course.

Goodbye 2009.

Invited Talk at IUCS 2009 tomorrow

I'm in Japan for the 100th time this year.
Tomorrow - talk at the conference, and then get drunk with some Microsoft colleagues. (Or is it the other way round?)
I don't blog too often but I do tweet at the office.
Both are blocked by the Great Wall in China.
So my blog entries tend to be travelogues posted from outside China these days.

Otaru, or Failure to Capture the Underlying Information Needs

MY QUESTION:
Is there a convenience store near here?
HOTEL CLERK:
No, there isn't.

(But it turns out that there is a supermarket
inside the hotel complex. I bought a bottle of water there.
That was all I wanted. Why didn't she mention the supermarket?)

MY QUESTION:
How do I get to the Tengu Mountain Ropeway?
LADY AT TRAIN STATION INFO DESK:
Please take a bus at Platform #3.

(But it turns out that there are two Platform #3's.
Why didn't she tell me?
We nearly took the wrong bus.)

MY QUESTION:
Can we get a tax refund for this later at the airport?
LADY AT A GLASSWARE SHOP:
You can get it here.
MY QUESTION:
But can we get it later at the airport?
LADY AT A GLASSWARE SHOP:
You can get it here.
MY QUESTION:
(Are you one of those stupid AI systems from the seventies?)

This was my third visit to Otaru. Fourth? No thanks.
But we had good food and took good pictures.


View from the hotel room





Glassware factory





Gareth (right) and someone I don't know (left)